Hello, I am new also

Hello, I just joined this forum to meet exciting and new people who share the same intersts as myself. I am a mother and a stepmom. I have an 8 month old son and two stepdaughters 11 and 7. I love to cook. I am always looking for economical but tasty dishes for my family since we are on a very tight budget. I enjoy growing heirloom vegetables and plants. I am always looking for new sources and varieties of plants and vegetables, along with fun ways to prepare them. This year I plan to can my heart out. I am new at canning as well, but I plan to gain some hands on experience this summer. I always welcome ideas and tip on this subject as well.

My dream is to become self sufficient and live off the land. My husband and I was headed toward that goal. We bought 6 acres and started living our dream. Shortly after our move, I lost my job and wasn't able to find another one and now we have moved back to town. We plan to return to the country again someday. In the meantime, I want to learn as much as I can about living that life style.

I am also interested in knowing more about homeschooling. My son is very young, but I want to gain as much knowledge as I possibly can to make and educated decision. My husband feels that having only one child at home and homeschooling him will rob him of learning socialization skills. I look froward to hearing from you.

I think you will find lots of like minded people here. I'm sorry you had to move back into town but like you said, you can still learn quite a bit about a self sufficient lifestyle there also.

I'm Debbie, homeschooling mom to 3 teen sons and we live in a small farming community. I'm the branch manager for our library (fancy title for a tiny little library that is open 2 days a week ) and do volunteer work in addition to homeschooling our kids. We too live in town but have been able to grow quite a bit of produce and even sold some 2 summers ago (the frost got our cherries last year and wiped out the crop). We have 1 swet and 1 sour cherry tree, a summer apple, a small peach tree that is too young to produce yet (but just wait in a few years right? ), rhubbard and mint plants, oregano, lemon thyme and chives, strawberries, grape (just plants last year and will add a few more plants this year) and the rest of the garden that will be planted this Spring (lettuce, brocolli, squash, spinach, chard, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and whatever else suits our fancy). I also can, dehydrate and freeze our excess. DH and my twins took up hunting and got 2 deer this past Fall. We butchered and processed one ourselves and gave the other to a friend for his family. I'm learning as I go since these were not skills that I was raised with.

Hi, and Welcome! I'm fairly new myself and I think you'll just love it here. It's so great in this world of commercialism and materialism to find a group of people who share so many of the same goals (financial and personal) as I do

Hi and welcome! I too have had to recently put my dream of country living on the back burner. We actually live in a rural area but it is part of a large city! We consider ourselves urban homesteaders. We are planning to become as self sufficient as possible and someday hope to move to a large acreage.